Protect Our National Monuments from President Trump With New Legislation

Aside from our national parks, there is no greater showcase of America's natural beauty than our national monuments. Like our parks, national monuments protect our natural and cultural heritage from exploitation, depletion, and destruction by private concerns.

These special places provide a place for Americans to enjoy our country's natural beauty, whether it's camping, site seeing, mountain biking or hiking. And they often have special cultural significance to many of our Native American tribes.

But their sentimental, environmental and cultural value doesn't seem to mean much to the Trump Administration. Last year, Trump's Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, took to America's national monuments like a bull in a china shop and announced he would put 27 of them under review. Several months later, the verdict was out; ten of America's most precious and awe-inspiring natural wonders would be modified. An unprecedented move by an American president. And something that shouldn't be allowed to happen.

While environmentalists and tribal groups battle the administration's decision in court, lawmakers are taking a different tact and working to protect our national monuments from presidential whims.

Sen. Tom Udall of NM along with 17 other Democratic senators have come together to introduce a the ANTIQUITIES Act of 2018 that would legally protect the boundaries of more than 50 national monuments and give the authority to modify them to Congress, not the president.

The new bill is in direct response to Trump's attack on our precious monuments and must become law if we are going to stop his overreach.

Please sign in support of the ANTIQUITIES Act of 2018 and make sure your representative knows you believe our national monuments deserve to be protected.